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Daniel Pocock: The risks of secret punishments in online communities

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OSS
Debian

While the controversy over the integrity of elections in free software communities is significant, a far more serious issue for all communities right now is the spectre of secret punishments and other practices that involve shaming people. Debian has recently experimented with these practices and it would be wise to ensure they are not repeated or replicated in any other community.

Secret punishments exploit shame to maintain secrecy and avoid controversy. For example, many pedophiles know they can keep offending because shame will keep their victims from talking.

This reveals an interesting feature of shame: people feel shame whether they did something wrong or not. An innocent 13-year-old victim of a pedophile feels shame. A rogue trader who knows he is guilty feels shame too. It is much the same emotion.

Not everybody responds the same way however. Consider the recent prosecution of Cardinal Pell in my home town, Melbourne, Australia. I went to Catholic schools and a number of relatives worked in Catholic education, in the administration down the road from St Patrick's Cathedral, where Pell would wander in from time to time for meetings. I used to row past St Kevin's almost every day. I met many people from St Kevin's during university too. It is unusual for me to see Cardinal Pell in this situation and I can't help contemplating people on both sides of the case. Consider one key fact from the trial: of the two boys who were allegedly abused, one has died from a drug overdose and there was no evidence that he ever told anybody about Pell's offenses at any point in his life. Shame prevented him from talking. Yet some victims of this abuse do choose to come forward.

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